Forestry is a vast subject. It is both broad and deep. It has to do with soil, climate, and topography. It affects both mountain and valley. It determines the course and volume of rivers. It influences physical and political geographic changes. It governs the prosperity and life of nations. The forest is only one of its incidents. One might spend the evening profitably with the single subject ''The Tree, '' or ''National Forests, Their Organization and Administration,'' or ''Forestry as it Affects the Lumber Industry", or "Forest Fires and How to Fight Them", or "1'he Uses of Wood and Its Substitutes", or "The Grove and Its Influences Upon the Home", or "The Forester as the Landscape Gardener of the Nation". Each one of these branches of the subject is interesting and profitable, but no one of them is vital. Two phases of the question are all important and are so closely associated that in many ways they are seen to be not only interdependent but co-extensive. These phases of the subject are (a) Why Forestry is necessarily a national problem, and (b) Forestry as the crowning physical manifestation of civilization,-one of the tests by which the Creator judges the progress of a people and their nation's :fitness for eternal life.

Almost every industrial town or city in the United States has at least one thing in common, and that is smoke. It is only of comparative recent date that smoke has been given serious consideration, outside of the office of smoke inspector and members of the anti-smoke league. The question of smoke is not a new one, for publications as to injury and legislation, date back to 1845. But since that time, we have had the great movement of people from the country to the city, in addition to the great immigration tide and the result is that large industrial centers have been built up. Smoke then has been considered as a ''necessary evil'' and has been looked upon as showing signs of prosperity to such centers.

The Payette River block embraces the National Forest lands on the watershed of the Payette River, Idaho. The bulk of the watershed is in Boise County. The Payette empties into the Snake River at the town of Payette, which has about 2,000 inhabitants. There are three main branches of the river, (1) the South Fork, (2) the Middle Fork, and (3) the North Fork. From the broad point of view of sale management, the block should be considered as the entire watershed, since resources and interests, other than those of the National Forest, influence to lesser or greater extent National Forest policies.

Foremost among the movements for a better forestry course at Ames, is that for the establishment of a summer camp at the close of the Freshman year. This plan is in perfect keeping with the Ames motto of "Science with Practice" in that half a year's work has been transferred to the woods, where actual forest conditions exist.

After efficient patroling, the next problem confronting those engaged in preventing the destruction of our forests by fire is the problem of an easy, sure, and speedy means of communication.